What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • What’s on your church website right now?

    Just a gentle reminder that people are looking for church services and Christmas events to go to right now. (Yes, right this minute. Today. Really.) It is worth asking what they will find if they go to your church website.

    One of the things that astonished me last Christmas was hearing people at St Mary’s saying that they had come to us because their local churches were not having any Christmas events or services.

    “Oh yes they are!” I replied in true panto style.

    “Oh no they’re not!” they replied, “we’ve looked, there’s nothing on their websites”.

    The time in the year when people are most eager to try out a new church and most welcome invitations to church seems to be around Christmas. Can I suggest that everyone reading this take a look at their own local church website and if they don’t find the details of the Christmas services prominently displayed, get hold of whoever does their website and very gently and lovingly and with every ounce of Christian compassion you can muster, bend their ear.

    That includes those responsible for diocesan websites which give a page to each of their churches. Remember, if those pages are there, google may well find them first. If people find webpages which list churches where the latest news is any older than last month (never mind last year) and where the words “No events at present” are shown in the week before Christmas, it might be said that you can’t really blame them for not turning up.

    Times of Christmas services at St Mary’s can be found here. Note that they don’t follow the same pattern as last year. We’re living on the edge, we are. 

    Right on the edge.

    ,

2 responses to “Carmen from the wings”

  1. Elizabeth Avatar
    Elizabeth

    A week already? Bother. Saw the notification, meant to listen/watch all week. Haven’t. Sigh. (previous five sentences describe phd-student life generally, I suspect, lack of grammar included).

    Reply
  2. Rev Ruth Avatar
    Rev Ruth

    Imagine if our little flocks could see behind the scenes at church on a Sunday morning. Would they be surprised to see the thurifer on his/her knees blowing frantically on the charcoal, swinging the thurible through 360 degrees to get it going? Would they be surprised to see the MC rummaging through the pile of paper looking for that Collect which has just been asked for? Would they be surprised to see the Altar Servers giggling and larking around before processing out sedately?

    These things are best left unseen too, I suspect.

    Reply

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